HL Interview Project CODING

I’m sorry that I didn’t post this BEFORE I made my annual trek to Colorado (and headed “up the mountain” to St. Elmo where phone and internet are a non-happening thing). BUT, since I had the luxury of a quiet mountain retreat to mull on all things coding category related, I thought I would take the first stab at organizing key words, phrases and topics into the beginnings of a coding category system for our collective coding adventures.

The DRAFT coding category scheme (see below, attached in WORD, and available to all via an editable Google Doc) is based on a grand sweep of content, including, most recently, our Wednesday, July 19 class session, but also going back to our wintercession research agenda development work, research articles from Spring 2017, and the IRB approval materials submitted for our HL interview project.

Without further ado, here’s a possible initial coding category scheme…

The attached file is in WORD, so this initial draft can expand or contract as necessary or desired. You can also edit directly on the Google Doc via the hotlink provided–BUT, I recommend you work in your groups a bit first BEFORE you start editing the shared doc.

You’ll note a couple of things about this draft coding scheme:

(1) I propose 8 main coding categories: Leadership in General, Heritage in General, Heritage Challenges, and Heritage Leadership (top row), and Develop People, Organizations & Communities, Engage Controversies, Foster Collaboration, and Facilitate Growth & an Inclusive Worldview (bottom row). These are an initial set of main coding categories, but y’all can suggest adding more or taking some away.

(2) Under each main coding category (or header), I list LOTS of topics, concepts, and key words and phrases. The lists need to be added to, subtracted from, or perhaps cited with references to relevant research to remind us why that topic/code might rise to the top, etc. Though it’ll get unwieldy at first, I suggest mostly ADDING key words/phrases for now, knowing that later we can do more lumping and bring order out of the chaos.

(3) I’ve only added ONE “sub-category” in this coding scheme and it’s under Heritage Leadership: “Pursue HL Opportunities” (it’s in italics). One really useful next step is to figure out what sub-categories should be nested under each of the proposed (and/or added) main coding categories? We also need to figure out what key words and phrases should nest under each sub-category.

I have heard some of you express anxiety about the coding process. That’s understandable. That’s also why I wanted to give you a “straw person” to work with in the coming 1-2 weeks as we finalize coding categories, sub-categories, and the descriptors that nest under the sub-category level. All of this is en route to an initial “coding dictionary” for our project.

In last week’s class, I asked students to divide into THREE GROUPS to discuss possible codes related to each of our interview questions. So far, the groups are as follows:

I know this doesn’t include everyone in attendance last Wednesday (e.g., Amber, Tom, Tonia), and not everyone was in attendance. That’s okay. If your name isn’t listed, then just add yourself to one of the groups and let the other group members know “you’re in.”

What should each group do? First, DISCUSS the initial, draft coding scheme (above, attached, hyperlinked). What do you like? Dislike? What’s missing in general? What’s missing specifically? Second, slice and dice the draft coding scheme! Feel free to propose ANY changes that your group feels would allow us to (a) accomplish the aims of the study, and (b) do justice to the comments provided by the interviewees. PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION to the research questions that your group is assigned to cover. Do these draft codes allow you/us to adequately code the responses we’ve received to your interview questions? Why or why not? What should be added or modified in some way? (Look at a few transcripts to see if you could use these codes to code the interviewees responses. Are there comments that don’t have a good code to apply? If so, then add that code to the appropriate category.)

NEXT CLASS: Our next class is on Wednesday, August 2. Unfortunately, I’ll probably be absent from class because the Coble’s will be driving back to St. Louis. Thus, I’d like to ask EACH GROUP to present the results of their group’s coding deliberations (thus far). What insights, additions and/or amendments do you have to share? I suggest y’all allow the first 30 minutes of class to a real-time (break out) group discussion about coding suggestions. Then allow another 20-30 minutes for each group to present their thoughts. Finally, under the capable leadership of one or more student volunteers (perhaps Michelle, Mary, Lindsay or Laurie–or any other intrepid soul), you could spend the last 20-30 minutes of class integrating insights and moving closer to a consolidated, revised coding scheme for the project.

Since I’m handing off the baton to y’all during the next class session–I wanted to “seed the deck” and give you a straw person to build upon. Hopefully that’ll facilitate a smoother process of developing our coding categories. Do try to understand the logic and the flow of what I’ve proposed, but then, FEEL FREE to make it your own!

I sent this via text, but here is the link for our discussion if it’s easier to access this way. I did not have the stuff that we already discussed – I’m hoping one of you kept that, so that you could add it in. Sorry. 🙁

This may or may not be helpful to others, but I’m sharing in case it is. I needed to see the visual of the codes and how they applied to our draft research agenda. In part, I wanted to see if there were parts of our original agenda that seemed out of place or unanswered. I don’t really know where to put the things that are at the top in green. Maybe you have suggestions?

I took Dr. Coble’s suggested codes and put them in colorful boxes to attach to the part of our original outline. It’s likely I have some misplaced, but really… we predicted a lot of these – What do you see?